


Demands of the Dead

by astolat



Series: Witcher works [9]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Candles, Kaer Morhen, M/M, Mourning, Witchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 21:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/pseuds/astolat
Summary: He would only ever need to light forty-five candles at once.





	Demands of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing stories on a theme of light for Hanukkah this year!
> 
> Prompt from nirejseki on DW: _Witcher: young Emhyr stuck in the North in the dark of winter, lighting candles and thinking of the Golden City and/or of revenge?_
> 
> A missing scenelet from [By Any Other Name](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12210708).

Spare candles could not be had easily; the stores at Kaer Morhen were not excessive, and the training masters kept an eye upon what was used. The trainees would have raided the supplies with great enthusiasm otherwise, although for food rather than light. The one weekly candle they _were_ given had to be spent for reading and writing, and Emhyr would not neglect his lessons. Instead he spent the year saving stubs out of candlesticks whenever they went out low enough, and even prying up the leftover nubs of wax hardened in the bases.

Geralt caught him melting a few of those nubs together once, halfway through the year, and though he did not betray him, he was openly puzzled. “You could just ask Vesemir for more candles?” he offered.

“No,” Emhyr said. Vesemir was not a fool. He was already suspicious, and he would surely recognize the Nilfgaardian rite of mourning. A rite which had to be carried out differently when you were mourning the emperor, who was also your father.

He kept at it, but they were not easy to gather, and he needed forty-six. One for every year of the late emperor’s life, to burn on the first night, and one more each night after, for every year since his father’s death, to bridge that dark, yawning distance.

His father had burned the candles for his own father so, once every year. Those candles had been tall as the length of Emhyr’s arm, the pure creamy pale yellow of finest royal beeswax, arrayed on both sides of the imperial chapel. Each year he had walked with his father past them, carrying the spare match and watching him light them with care, one after another. One hundred and twenty-six candles burning on the first night, a promise that Emhyr had never thought would be broken. There was elven blood in their line, and the elves lived long. His grandfather had been hale even at that age; Emhyr remembered him vaguely, a tall proud figure, and he remembered the leavetaking ceremony, gathered with his father and aunts at the bedside to say farewell, before his grandfather had deliberately breathed out his last and gone serene into the night.

But he had watched his father die screaming, and he would only ever need to light forty-five candles at once.

He had thirty-seven stubs and only a week left when Geralt caught him prying out another bit of wax again: Emhyr had been forced to grow a little more incautious, and he was collecting even smaller nubs. Geralt eyed him and didn’t ask again, but that night he put his own candle down in the middle of the floor and laid down with his book on one side of it, without saying anything. Emhyr slowly blew out his own candle, then took his book and lay down on the other side.

He knew he was being a fool. Geralt was as clear and kind as sweet water, and as far removed from his own destiny as Kaer Morhen itself was from Nilfgaard. On the other side of the world, and further out of reach. Emhyr did not delude himself with the idea that he had a choice. His father could have escaped at any moment; he could have closed his eyes and breathed his last and slipped away into gentle death. But he had made a sacrifice of his pain instead. Emhyr tried not to hate him for it.

At the end of the week, he cut his candle into nine equal stubs. His throat felt painfully tight as he carved them apart. When he was done, he put them into his carefully hoarded bundle and took it away deep into the fortress. Kaer Morhen had been built in a time when witchers were more necessary and more numerous; there were many unused chambers now, and storerooms empty of all but spiders. Emhyr had found a low hallway and a chamber both thick with dust undisturbed for years, with heavy doors on both. Alone, behind their security, he arranged the tiny blackened stubs of the candles on the floor in two careful lines, and lit them one after another, saying the prayers for the dead over every one.

# End

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you like, [reblog](https://astolat.tumblr.com/post/168628764113/hanukkah-story-4-to-a-prompt-from-nirejseki-on)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Demands of the Dead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13044225) by [BabelGhoti (TheHandmadeTale)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHandmadeTale/pseuds/BabelGhoti)
  * [[Podfic] Demands of the Dead by Astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16143101) by [Vodka112](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodka112/pseuds/Vodka112)




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